Provisioning manager for optimizing selection of available resources

Abstract

A method and software for fulfilling a resource request in a data processing network includes specifying characteristics of the requested resource responsive to detecting the resource request. A set of attributes is then derived from the specified characteristics. The specified characteristics indicate broad or general properties of the needed resource while the derived attributes preferably indicate the hardware and software components of a resource ideally suited to fulfill the resource request. Attribute information associated an available resource is then evaluated against the attributes derived from the specified characteristics. An available resource is then selected, based on the evaluation, to satisfy the resource request. The attributes of the selected resource best match the attributes derived from the specified characteristics. The requested resource may be a server resource and specifying the characteristics of the requested resource may includes specifying a server type from a constrained set of server types.

Description

BACKGROUND[0001]1. Field of the Present Invention[0002]The present invention is in the field of data processing networks and, more particularly, data processing networks in which resources from a / pool of available resources are allocated as needed.[0003]2. History of Related Art[0004]In the field of information technology (IT), provisioning is an increasingly important concept. Provisioning, as the term is used in this disclosure, refers to functionality that enables an environment such as a data center to allocate IT resources as they are needed. In a fully automated provisioning implementation, a data center may respond to variations in load by allocating and deallocating servers to a particular server cluster.[0005]A web server cluster, for example, may require more servers during peak demand periods (such as when consumers are likely to be accessing the cluster) while a database server cluster may be configured to execute the bulk of its tasks at other times. In this scenario, p...

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